Reducing the stress of managing diabetes might even have biological effects that improve the condition, they add.

This is the first randomized controlled trial of a self-compassion intervention among people with diabetes, lead author Anna Friis told Reuters Health by email.

"Self-compassion-based treatments are founded on the notion that our tendency to be harshly self-critical or judgmental when we feel we have 'failed' or done something wrong makes our stress and distress worse," said Friss, a psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Kristin suggests self-compassion has three core qualities – mindfulness, connectedness and self-kindness. She has developed a suite of tools specifically designed to strengthen self-compassion through the practice of these three core qualities.

This two-day workshop is an introduction to Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC), an empirically-supported training program based on the pioneering research of Kristin Neff and the clinical perspective of Chris Germer.

MSC combines the skills of mindfulness and self-compassion to enhance our capacity for emotional wellbeing. Mindfulness is the first step—turning with loving awareness toward difficult experience (emotions, sensations, thoughts). Self-compassion comes next—bringing loving awareness to ourselves. Together, mindfulness and self-compassion comprise a state of warm, connected presence during difficult moments in our lives.

I recently interviewed Neff about how self-esteem fails us and how we can boost our compassion for ourselves instead. An edited version of the conversation follows.

Olga Khazan: What are some contexts in which we usually hear about boosting self-esteem?

Kristin Neff: Well, it seems like it's just deeply permeated, especially American culture, where we have very high levels of self-esteem and narcissism. I think because of the big self-esteem movement, people just got it in their heads that the key to psychological health was self-esteem. Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell showed that because of this emphasis on self-esteem, we actually got a generation of narcissists. I think it’s generally out there in the culture, but maybe especially among parents and educators.

Although self-compassion has been researched extensively over the past decade, self-empathy has gained little attention. Maybe this is because the two are often used interchangeably, or maybe because self-compassion is more solution focussed in its relationship to suffering. As with self-compassion, self-empathy requires a 'tuning into' our own current state of being with full awareness.

But unlike self-compassion, in self-empathy we do not focus solely on the suffering within but pay attention to our complete inner experience. Moreover, we observe without judgement but also without the focus of bringing kindness to the observed (as we would when practising self-compassion).

Self-empathy serves to bring clarity and space to our inner experienced world. It is a form of respectful inner listening, with a readiness to take seriously whatever signals arise internally. It opens us up, yet we are not swept along by the experience itself as when we feel overtaken by an emotion. We also do not look for ways to change what we experience in any direction, we only observe and sense what really takes place.

Filled with illuminating case examples, Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy shows readers how to apply self-compassion practices in treatment. The first two chapters illuminate what self-compassion is, the science behind it, and why it is so beneficial in therapy.

The rest of the book unpacks practical clinical applications, covering not only basic clinical principles but also specific, evidence-based techniques for building affect tolerance, affect regulation, and mindful thinking, working with self-criticism, self-sabotage, trauma, addiction, relationship problems, psychosis, and more, and overcoming common roadblocks.

A lot of college students sacrifice their mental and physical health in order to get the grades they want. I would know, since I’m one of them. While sleep deprivation and an empty stomach might seem like a small price to pay for a good grade, these behaviors can be detrimental in the long run.

Beside the physical consequences such as a higher risk for heart attack and slower metabolism, pushing ourselves to exhaustion can be extremely harmful to our mental health and social life. Hunger and sleep deprivation can make us irritated and cause us to lash out at our friends. Additionally, the mental and physical fatigue can cause us to burn out and fail in times of stress.

Dr Kristin Neff shows how we can be happier - and better placed to help others - by learning to be kind and compassionate to ourselves. This talk was filmed at an Action for Happiness event in London on 26 July 2016. www.actionforhappiness.org

Mindful Self-Compassion is an invaluable tool for teaching my clients to navigate through suffering while it helps me avoid caregiving fatigue.

In his workshops and in the book, Wisdom & Compassion in Psychotherapy, Dr. Germer teaches a technique of self-compassion – compassionate breathing to use when working with difficult clients. We’ve all had them – clients whose stories are tragic, heartbreaking, harrowing. We want to be empathetic, but not take it all on ourselves (aren’t we calling this caregiver fatigue lately?).

With this technique, we not only cultivate healthy compassion for our clients, but we are able to recharge our own batteries so we have more to give.

Dr. Germer talks about taking in a deep breath of compassion for ourselves, then exhaling kindness and compassion for the other person (client).

Strive for more, work even harder, aim to be the best! We live in a society that regularly sends us such messages. Meanwhile, most of us don’t stop to consider whether our goals are possible or whether they would even bring us lasting happiness.

Even if we were to win a gold medal at the Olympics, our status as reigning champion would only last a few years and would most likely be accompanied by anxiety about losing in the future. On my first day at Yale, one of the deans proclaimed, “You are not only the elite; you are the elite of the elite,” and I still remember the wave of nausea this comment evoked in me. Success, after all, is a precarious position

. While we strive to become infallible and to retain our position at the top, we cannot escape suffering.

As we study and practice NVC, we learn that our ability to self-empathize is a requisite skill for living out our NVC consciousness in the world. Deep empathy, dialogue, mediation, teaching NVC, and perhaps most importantly, knowing what we want to do, versus what we think we should do, are all supported by our skills in self-empathy.

This ability to self-empathize is a key to being compassionate with ourselves, in our significant relationships and in our professional lives. Through self-empathy we can understand what we want and how to get it in a way that is in harmony with our values. We can hold a more compassionate view of the world more often. We can practice NVC anywhere and everywhere.

In 1986, California state assemblyman John Vasconcellos came up with what he believed could be “a vaccine for major social ills” like teen pregnancy and drug abuse: a special task-force to promote self-esteem among Californians. The effort folded three years later, and was widely considered not to have accomplished much.

To Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, that’s not surprising. Though self-esteem continues to reverberate as a pop-psych cure-all, the quest for inflated egos, in her view, is misguided and largely pointless

Inspired by Kristen Neff’s article on self-compassion in the November Shambhala Sun, graphic recorder and Shambhala Sun reader Johnine Byrne created this wonderful graphic recording of Neff’s three steps for self-compassion.

Self-compassion is currently a hot trend in positive psychology research, and the outcomes are exciting.

Researchers, such as Kristin Neff, PhD, are showing that increased self-compassion can contribute to increased feelings of wellbeing, and decreased anxiety and depression. Plus, self-compassion is simple to understand and relatively easy to adopt into one’s daily life! Here is what you need to know to get started….

There are three steps to accessing self-compassion in any given moment of pain. If followed, these steps can ease the pain and suffering of a difficult moment.

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